How to Find Appropriate Free Psychology Dissertation Examples

Psychology dissertations submitted by other students are a great source of ideas on how to organize your research, select and justify your methodology, and also format the final paper. Their reference lists can lead you to useful sources.

However, dissertations offered for sale online are rather expensive, and you probably do not want to pay that amount of money without being sure that this particular sample will help you. An alternative way is to look for free examples from reliable sources.

Visit your university library.

Your university probably has on file all dissertations ever submitted by its students. To discover appropriate examples, restrict your search to papers from the psychology faculty. Not all university databases have convenient navigation by faculties and subjects. You might have to use keywords; the more you enter, the more relevant results will be yielded. However, if you use too many search words, there might be no results at all. In this case, omit those that are more general and less specific – for example, delete “developmental psychology” and leave “language acquisition.”

Browse the libraries of other universities.

The websites of other universities that have psychology departments can also be a valuable source of dissertation examples, offering a broader choice than your own university’s database. Read the terms of use to make sure that the database is available to general public, not only to their students. You might need to request an example that interests you by email. However, such services are generally free to use. All you need to do is to leave your contact data.

Check state and national databases.

Many states compose online libraries of all dissertations submitted in their universities, in order to assist new aspiring candidates. Being a public domain, such databases are free to use and open to everyone. You can browse examples by topic and subject. If you invest a bit more time in your research, you can even discover a discipline-specific database for your state or country – the one that contains only psychology papers, including a broader selection of those on uncommon and rarely explored topics.

Ask your advisor.

If all ways of finding appropriate sample papers for free have failed, you can ask your supervisor for help. He or she might be storing several top-notch dissertations as examples of best practice and gladly allow you to have a look. Besides, your advisor might suggest a place where you can easily discover many other great papers.